Articles tagged “U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops”

VATICAN CITY (RNS) “Many of their rights are violated, they are obliged to separate from their families and, unfortunately, continue to be the subject of racist and xenophobic attitudes,” Pope Francis said of migrants along the U.S.-Mexico border.

(RNS) “If the point of this event were to single out a group of individuals and target them for hatred, I most certainly would not be there,” wrote San Francisco Achbishop Salvatore Cordileone, who leads the Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

WASHINGTON (RNS) Bishop Gerald Kicanas of Tucson, Ariz., said bishops wanted to tell some of the stories from a border Mass to humanize the immigration debate because “when there’s a faceless person, it’s easy to reject or ignore or put aside that person.”

(RNS) The potential for a robust alliance between the White House and the nation’s largest church fizzled almost from the start of Obama’s candidacy in 2007, and a relationship that started badly went downhill when he was elected.

(RNS) A group of leading Catholic activists and academics has renewed its criticisms of Catholic University of America over a large gift from the billionaire industrialist and conservative funder Charles Koch, and over statements that seemed to endorse Koch’s stands against climate change and the right of public workers to unionize.

WASHINGTON (RNS) Institutions — both secular and “religious institutions,” as well as “religious organizations” — do not have the right to claim “consciences” in order to trample on the conscience rights that properly belong to their employees.

(RNS) If ministries don’t comply with the government’s contraception mandate, the financial penalties will mean that some ministries may have to close their doors. As that happens, the poor and those who serve them will be hurt the most.

WASHINGTON (RNS) The scrutiny of the Rev. Bob Nugent’s activism symbolized the Vatican’s approach to all talk of homosexuality under Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI compared with the more tolerant “who am I to judge?” tone set recently by Pope Francis.

(RNS) This week’s court decision that freed a senior cleric in Philadelphia who had been jailed for shielding an abusive priest was a symbolic setback for victims’ advocates but one with a substantial, and discouraging, message for their cause: None of the churchmen implicated in cover-ups during the worst decades of abuse will likely ever face charges.